This project has been with me for years, and it has evolved more than once. At its largest, it was overwhelming — too broad in identity, too ambitious in scope, too much to carry. Rather than walk away, I reframed it, stripped it down, and found what it needed to be for me to actually do it. What remains is the part that was always true: my history with photography, the history of photography itself, and a trip to the middle.
Inspired by the parallel journeys of Todd Webb and Robert Frank — who drove separately across America in 1955 and 1956 and made photographs that still define how we see mid-century life in this country — I’ll retrace a path through Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri in June 2026 while adding other locations of my own.
Middle Ground is a photographic journey in the truest sense. Along the way, I’ll seek out the photographers, shop owners, darkroom technicians, and film devotees who are keeping analog alive alongside the digital world that surrounds it — people who speak the same language I do, in places I’ve never been. I’ll stop at surviving film labs, explore communities I’ve never seen before, and connect through the one thing that has defined my life for thirty years — photography. The cameras I carry reflect that history — period film bodies alongside a modern medium format digital back, the ghosts of the medium’s past brought forward into my own continuing story.
It’s personal. It’s archival. And it’s open-ended, the way the best photography always is.
Three histories travel with me on this trip: theirs, the medium’s, and my own. Seventy years after Webb and Frank pointed their cameras at America, and thirty years after I opened my first film lab, I’m pointing mine at what remains.
Dates: June 18th- July 3rd 2026
Route: Massachusetts → New York → Pennsylvania → Ohio → Indiana → Illinois → Iowa → Nebraska → Kansas → Oklahoma → Kansas → Missouri → Illinois → Indiana → Ohio → Pennsylvania → New York → Massachusetts
Link to Working Map: RoadtrippersMap
Join the conversation on Facebook, in the Middle Ground Facebook Group
ASK: Are there any family friends or people I should connect with along the route? I am looking for photographers, families, places to stay, yards to tent in, possible supporters/sponsors (a Kickstarter might be arranged), and suggestions. Contact me here.